You Won't Believe What Is Making These Bizarre Webs In The Amazon

Scientists have finally found the culprit behind the strange web
towers in the image to the right, first discovered last year in
the Amazon.

Images of these towers went viral back in August of 2013, and
many suspected it was made by a spider — since it was spun out of
silk — but no one knew which spider, or what the weird webs were
for.

Phil Torres from the Tambopata Research Center, Lary Reeves and
Geena Hill from the University of Florida, and wildlife
photographer Jeff Cremer from Perunature.com trekked deep into the
Peruvian Amazon to study the structures and attempt to identify
what was creating them.

The team located about 45 of the web towers and observed and
dissected some of them, but their results were inconclusive. The
scientists began to think the structures might be just a tower of
sperm designed to entice and fertilize female spiders.

On the last day of the trip, though, one of the strange
structures hatched, and a baby spider emerged. You can see what
the teeny tiny baby mystery spider below:

Perunature.com/Jeff Cremer

The scientists saw several adult spiders around, but never
witnessed them constructing the towers, so they still don't know
how the structures are made. They did observe lots of mites
around the sticky web fences and towers like the one below.

Perunature.com/Jeff
Cremer

At first the scientists had entertained the idea that the
silk-producing mites might be responsible for the structures, but
once the baby spiders hatched the scientists knew that couldn't
be right.

Instead, the scientists believe that the sticky fence surrounding
the web towers might be a way to ensnare mites as food for the
newly hatched spiders or a defense mechanism to protect the
spider egg from ants or other tiny predators.

You can see how the thin strands of web create a perimeter around
the center tower containing the egg in the image below.

Perunature.com/Troy Alexander

This is potentially the first documented case of a structure that
hatches a single spider egg: usually spiders lay multiple eggs
that hatch in groups. The team of scientists are still trying to
identify the spider.